The evolution of college football is captured through an examination of selected games that serve as signposts in the changes the sport has seen.
“The most utterly random sequence in the history of college football – the most unforeseeable single moment in the history of American sports – is the final play of the Cal-Stanford game in 1982. Trailing 20-19 after a heroic go-ahead field goal drive by Stanford quarterback John Elway, Cal received the kickoff with four seconds remaining, lateraled the ball five times, and reached the end zone as the Stanford band charged onto the field. The same guy who originally received the kick, Kevin Moen, weaved through the band and wound up scoring the touchdown, plowing over a trombone player while doing so. That play is now known as The Play, because it needs no further embellishment; it is such a wondrous thirty-second encapsulation of the screwball nature of college football that even the trombone player (Gary Tyrrell) has achieved a measure of immortality. There have been other Cal-Stanford-like plays in both pro football and small-college football, but none as patently absurd as Cal-Stanford, and none ever will be.”
